Sunday, July 31, 2016

Or what happens when you turn on your Win 7 machine and right after the blue and white welcome screen, instead of getting your desktop you get a solid black screen with a cursor that doesn't do anything.

That just sucks.

Drag the box over to Geek Street and give it to them. Meantime I'm saved by having my old XP machine that I kept because it had some programs I use on it that wouldn't transfer. Runs a bit slow. Maybe I should runs some maintenance on it. Start with Malware Bytes, which informs me that the malware list is about 850 days out of date and would I like to update it. Hard to believe it's been that long, but sure.

55 pieces of junk down the drain later, the machine runs much better. Run CCleaner. 850 meg of further junk later the machine seems almost back to normal. Refresh Firefox? Probably shouldn't have done that but the inconvenience was minimal. It also seems that in the last 850 days I've updated a few passwords and of course have not kept the old box current.

Sat at 8AM I go out for breakfast with some other bloggers. 9:30 Geek St calls and leaves a message that my computer is ready. D'wife is sleeping in. 10:30 I get back and immediately take off to run errands. 1 PM I get back and D'wife has gotten up and informs me that GS called and my machine is ready. I check and sure enough, they close at noon on Saturday so no new machine until Monday.

The problem here is that I've been using the Lightning add-on to keep track of my schedule and without the new machine I find I barely know what day of the week it is, never mind where I'm supposed to be and what I'm supposed to be doing. Coming up is the IDPA match at DuMont with a rifle side match, an IDPA-style rifle only match out at Byers, a drone race at which I've been invited to bring the pedal air gun so as to let the spectators take pot shots at the racing drones with big Nerf darts, and a Weird Al concert. Last I heard, there were no actual conflicts.

Saturday, July 30, 2016

The federal court in Richmond found that the primary purpose of North Carolina's wasn't to stop voter fraud, but rather to disenfranchise minority voters. The judges found that the provisions "target African Americans with almost surgical precision."

Previously the 5th circuit in Texas had come to the same conclusion although the USSC had upheld Illinois and Wisconsin's similar laws. If the trend toward sanctioning vote fraud continues, perhaps some young lawyer with time on his hands could file a federal lawsuit demanding that all use of photo ID be banned as being inherently racist.

Should she get elected, what happens will depend on who controls the legislature. During the Clinton administration, the Republican house and senate told Bill how it was going to be and dared him to object. They wound up making him look like he knew what he was doing and effectively got him reelected.

Obama started out with a Dem trifecta and a veto-proof one at that. His and their actions in his first term cost him the Senate, then the House. The get-along, go-along attitude of the Republicans produced the Tea Party. They did prevent some of his antics, but the lack of pushback to president Pen-And-Phone has resulted in the most unlikely GOP candidate ever.

Still, I would venture to say that either Hillary goes to jail, or we will. A variation on that line "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."

One of my gun clubs is planning to run an IDPA-style match next month with all the stages configured for carbines instead of pistols. Nearest targets will be at 35 yards and longest ones at 200 so a 4X scout scope sounds like a good idea. Also a chance to try out the accuracy fix I did to the Hi Point. Preliminary testing is giving me 3MOA groups under less than optimal conditions. I'm guessing that I can get 2MOA or better right now.
Aim points:
35 yd = zero
75 yd = 3-4 in low - aim for the neck to get the head shots
125 yd = zero
150 yd = 7 in high - aim for the neck to get the A-zone body hits
200 yd = 14 in high - aim to part the hair to get the A-zone body hits.

The AR shooters are probably thinking that this is a lot like the trajectory of a thrown rock, but it's a 165 gr rock.

...beyond my control or comprehension, blogging has suffered a bit of a setback. Turning on the computer got me as far as the blue with white streaks welcoming screen followed by a fade to black with only the cursor showing. Nothing else.

Fortunately when I upgraded to the now defunct box, there were several programs I continue to use on my old XP box so I kept it and added a switch. Here I am on my XP box.

Other annoyances: I don't usually use the old box on line so several of my passwords are out of date on the old box.. Fortunately I have most of them in a text file I printed out so if I need to visit my account at say www.midgetleatherporn loftyculturalidealism.com, I can simply consult the list and hope I updated the list when I last changed the password.

Geek Street will call me when they get around to fixing the bug, meantime it's Win XP Pro. This may delay publication of the results of the e-postal match as well so take another weekend.

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Here's a cartoon I came across describing events at the DNC convention:

Back in the 19th century the Czar of Russia had a ploy by which he appointed several cabbages from his garden to his cabinet. When some policy or other went wrong, as they sometimes do, he would mollify the peasantry by apologizing for the error and announcing that a couple of his ministers had been beheaded.

Here we are again with the misdemeanant getting the chair, and the major felon walking free.

Monday, July 25, 2016

This turned out to be not what I was expecting. This film by D'Souza is actually a fairly detailed history of the Democrat party from its inception about 1820 to present. Interspersed with this is some insights into D'Souza's time spent in jail for daring to criticize the president in his first film. One clip was him talking to his fellow inmates about why they were there. One for murder, one for manslaughter, one for theft, etc. Mostly pretty rough customers. They asked him what he was in for and he told them that a friend of his was running for office and he gave her too much money. This cracked the regulars up.

There was a discussion with an inmate in for fraud who described the process in some detail, and D'Souza shows how the process ties in with the Dem party line in general, and the Clintons in particular.

The film is worth seeing as it covers bits of American history that usually get glossed over in school. I'd recommend taking your kids to see it if only for that reason. I already knew a lot of what was covered but there were several additional bits that were new to me. The production values were first rate and the performance of the national anthem at the end was over the top.

To be fair, he doesn't really like anyone although some are featured more prominently in his speeches than others. Remember this?

After word of the arrest broke, the President weighed in during a press conference saying that while he didn’t have all the facts, “the Cambridge police acted stupidly.”

Which resulted in

But according to Van Jones, the beer summit was not a chance for both sides of the disagreement to take stock, but a media event which forced the President to “sit humbly” across from a “racist” police officer:

The poor baby. In his defense, while he doesn't seem to like anyone in general, there are holy men he seems to hold in high regard:

Friday, July 15, 2016

Mine, specifically. The Camaro is what they call the "base" model which means that I was lucky to get wheels and tires on it. No big deal but what I really miss is the cruise control. After considerable digging I found that the wiring harness for the Gen 4 Camaros is complete and installing the CC is a matter of finding the components at the junk yard and bolting them in.

But...

Seems there's Gen 4(a) and gen 4(b), and I've got the (b). The b rev has an electronic throttle control so the cable set that runs the throttle and CC isn't there, nor is it readily installable. The flip side to this is that someone on one of the forums casually mentioned that the cable-less throttle includes everything required for an all electronic cruise control. The implication here is that putting it in must be easy otherwise I would have seen numerous posts on how to do it.

I need to cultivate some GM gearheads.

Update: Seems the Gen 4(b) cars with drive-by-wire have the CC function programmed into the ECU. All you need to do is install a turn signal stick with the CC controls on it, connect the tiny 4-pin connector, and you're cruisin'. The whole operation can be done with no tools and takes about 10 minutes. Any CC equipped stick will work as long as it resembles the one you're removing. I got mine from a Buick Park Avenue at the junk yard.

Spotted this while dog walking. This needs a bit of finishing, but it's well on it's way to becoming the 3-window deuce coup of the 21st century.

Made from a Mazda pickup, with '40 Ford hood, cut down bed, gas tank in bed,

302 Ford motor, 4-speed, 4bbl, headers, etc. The dashboard was from a Chevy and had a Ford oval pasted over the word General in General Motors. A perfect over powered compact vehicle, just needs a bit of TLC and finishing. It's for sale, asking price is $4995 so I suspect it's still available.

The Cleveland police have issued a peremptory stand down notice to its men for the upcoming RNC event. This after a local judge revised the "no riot" zone to be much smaller than was originally asked for. Got to get the protesters within rock throwing distance of the delegates I guess.

Bernies Brownshirts in all of their current variations plan to be there including some who plan to be conspicuously armed. I suppose this is from the Palliwood playbook in which you throw rocks, bottles, Molotov cocktails and whatever until someone throws one back, then you fall to the ground, feign as much injury as you can, and get carried off to a waiting ambulance while the media videotapes the scene. The "ambulance" is usually someones car or pickup, and will carry the "near mortally wounded protestor" as far as around the nearest corner where he will jump out and rejoin his comrades.

Prof Timothy Smith of the U of Minn. has a plan to at least help cover the costs of gun violence which he sees as quite reasonable. It's an annual registration fee on rifles and pistols amounting to $15/year on rifles and $200/yr on pistols. Presumably we would get little license plates to affix to our guns to which the year and month sticker would be attached.

Only a couple of problems.
Item 1 is that word "registration". It's been tried in Australia, Connecticut, New York, and Canada and the compliance rate varies from 5-20%. In less liberal areas I foresee lower rates.
Item 2 is that you're assessing a tax on an enumerated right, you know like voting. Of course if Hill gets elected the poll tax may see a revival and I'm sure her Supreme court will see nothing wrong with that.

My suggestion if you really want to reduce the number of gun deaths in this country would be to attack not the guns, but the users. Since the professor has no problem with a poll tax, let me suggest he switch his emphasis to the users and bring back the post civil war Black Codes. Most homicides are, alas committed by black and Hispanic youth against other black and Hispanic youth. making it illegal for blacks or Hispanics to own guns would no doubt reduce the firearm death rate by about 90%, excluding suicides.

Might be worth a government grant and certainly a couple of doctoral dissertations to gather up some grad students and visit the appropriate areas of Minneapolis-St Paul and try their hands at getting the high risk population to turn in their guns voluntarily.

Congress animal Bonnie Watson Colman has taken advantage of the latest nutball-with-a-gun incident to come out against assault weapons. Her position is that the arms permitted by that pesky second amendment should be limited to those in general use at the time of its writing. Asked about police use of modern weapons, she said this:

“That has not been an issue. I don’t know. The kind of police violence —
police misconduct has not really been an issue of assault weapons. I
don’t know if it ought to be extended. The only use of assault weapons
is to shoot as many people as possible in the shortest period of time,”
she said. “I haven’t really thought of the role of police in that.”

I think they must normally see the police as an extension of their own authority, useful for keeping the peasants in their places and putting down insurrections in the event of a Republican win at the polls.

Short concise and to the point. I believe a public defender could take this case and get 3 convictions resulting in 15-30 years in the Federal joint and a permanent ban on ever holding office in any capacity ever again.

Meantime Trump has been very low key, acting more presidential and reserved. Scott Adams has noticed as well.

Sunday, July 10, 2016

My new Carbon Footprint from Government Motors came to me with an inoperable fuel gauge. It had 2 modes, 125% full and -25% empty. A quick search of the topic revealed some 2.3MM hits in no time at all so this must be fairly common. The no-brain fix is to replace the whole fuel pump module which runs $55-$555/ea depending on the source. NAPA quoted me $315-$350.

Alternatively you can get a small piece of sheet metal that snaps onto your sensor arm on the fuel pump for $23 + shipping.

On my car the fuel pump is under a cover plate, under the carpet in the "trunk" area. Your location will be different. Installation is not hard, it took me about an hour and it seems to work. Mine has been in about an hour with no drive time on it but if it goes south on me, I'll mention it. A $30 fix.

Friday, July 8, 2016

Scott Adams of Dilbert is suggesting that Comey did the honorable thing by not calling for an indictment of Hillary Clinton because such an action would cost her the election and he would be blamed for the election of Donald Trump. He says that Comey says:

1. Hillary Clinton is 100% guilty of crimes of negligence.
2. The FBI recommends dropping the case.
From
a legal standpoint, that’s absurd. And that’s how the media seems to be
reacting. The folks who support Clinton are sheepishly relieved and
keeping their heads down. But the anti-Clinton people think the
government is totally broken and the system is rigged. That’s an
enormous credibility problem.
But what was the alternative?
The
alternative was the head of the FBI deciding for the people of the
United States who would be their next president. A criminal indictment
against Clinton probably would have cost her the election.

This is absurd. Neither convention has happened yet and the Dems have other candidates in the wings who can be put forward on little or no notice who are just as plausible as the Hildebeast. Joe Biden for example could put aside his court jesters hat and team with Fauxcahontis Warren. He is after all arguably less corrupt and more competent than Hill. Pretty much anyone the Dems select would be a stronger candidate than Hill.

If Comey was interested in maintaining the governments credibility, he wouldn't have given the justice departments blessing to such an obvious crook. OTOH maybe he is trying to elect Trump.

Thursday, July 7, 2016

A pointy-headed liberal is calling for anti-gunners like himself to band together and storm the NRA headquarters, blazing away and leaving no survivors. To quote someone else (Huffman or Reynolds, I forget) "Why are the pacifists so violent?"

To repeat a QOTD from a few posts down:

Democrats are
using guns to kill each other – and want it to stop – whereas Republicans are using guns to defend against Democrats.

Which is why I don't think an assault on NRA headquarters would get very far. Unless the professor could raise a large enough army of pacifists like himself with polished skills at using EBRs.

Most gun violence would end if only we could prohibit Democrats from owning or possessing firearms.

In semi-related news, a man in Minnesota was shot 5 times and killed while reaching for his ID as ordered when he politely informed the officer that he had a CCW and was carrying. Moral: Don't ask, don't tell.

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

An attempt by a "bipartisan" group to undo the gerrymandering that was imposed on us back in '10 has been tossed off the ballot on the pretext that it covered multiple topics. This is good as the underlying premise is flawed.
Under this new method a large committee consisting of 4 Reps, 4 Donks, and 4 "unaffiliated" would carefully gerrymander the state to the point that 8 of them would approve and this would become the new map. Problem here is the source of the unaffiliateds. Seems they would be appointed by those famously unaffiliateds including the Colo Supreme court ( Donk majority), the governor (D-Space case) and the legislature ( 50% Donk).

Way better would be legislation calling for the districts to be drawn by computer, to be compact, contiguous, as competitive as practical, and accessible. We have one district with a mountain ridge running through it that requires a trip through 3 other districts to get from one side to the other. This would replace the 4 unaffiliated hacks with some computer geeks and when a map was complete, the approval of 6 of the 8 committee people would get it passed on to the legislature.

The committee behind this is singularly anonymous and hard to contact.

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

The thing about mass shootings is that they highlight the fact that the government cannot protect the citizens when protection is needed on short notice. Following the Orlando shooting in which when seconds counted, the police were only 3 hours away, it becomes more and more obvious that the real first responder is the person already on the scene.

For some reason the Imam Obama* seems to think we kuffir should be disarmed. For some reason, we kuffir aren't buying this. Here's what we are buying:

June is usually a relatively quiet month for gun sales. Nothing like an evangelical Muslim to boost the numbers.

*Found this reference in comments somewhere. To me Dhimmi Obama would be more accurate, but Imam Obama rolls off the tongue more easily. Besides, just like in Iran, if you're tight with the priesthood, nothing bad is going to happen to you.

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Yes, I know that title can cover a vast array of topics, but Science Alert is telling us that global warming is now inevitable so I decided to live it up, sold the Jag and bought

one of these. It's an 02 and very vanilla featuring almost no automated doo dads at all. Still I got a manual trans, 3.8l engine with a moderately noisy exhaust, $3.20 in change in the center console and a Passport radar detector. It cleaned up nicely and the goo in the cup holder quit moving after one application of Goo Gone and a shot of Oil Eater, and with only 2 more soakings in G-G, is now completely gone.

This is a lot closer to a sports car than the Jag and I'm finding it more fun to drive. No it is not what I consider a sports car, but I believe it'll do.

No it doesn't come with a big black Stetson hat. That's a Pontiac option. As a mid-life crisis car, it suggests I'll live to be about 130 so I'll take that optimistic outlook.

Friday, July 1, 2016

A CBS poll is suggesting that gun ownership is at its lowest point in recent history with only 36% of U.S. households admitting to having a gun of any sort on the premises.

Given the record gun sales in the last 8 years, I'd say the headline should read that a record low number of Americans are now willing to admit to a snoopy survey on the phone that they have any guns at all. NICS suggests that since 1990, some 262,000,000 guns have been sold which means slightly less than one for every person in the country, or 2 for everyone willing to admit to owning one.

Gun shops are reporting a lot of new faces coming in so I'm inclined to believe that the survey is under reporting actual ownership. If the Donks decide to believe the survey, then Hills campaign against guns might make sense. Of course if gun owners are holding out on the surveyors,then ahe's committing political suicide.

Paul Ryan has decided to give the D's a shot at their anti gun legislation. I don't expect any of this to pass, still, an e-mail to your Senator and/or representative might be in order. I believe this is for no other purpose than to get the R's on record as "favoring gun sales to terrorists" or whatever spin the press wants to use for the election.